


Take The Pieces and Build Them Skywards

by ashamedbliss



Category: Humans (TV), Merlin (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Artificial Intelligence, Immortal Merlin, M/M, Past Character Death, Reincarnation, synthetics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-29
Updated: 2015-07-29
Packaged: 2018-04-11 21:01:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4452215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashamedbliss/pseuds/ashamedbliss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur never reincarnated after he died, and Merlin gave up all hope of seeing his King again. But his current incarnation, Leo, might be able to do something about it, thanks to some coding, a kidnapped domestic appliance, and just a little bit of magic</p><p>Merlin/Humans crossover</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take The Pieces and Build Them Skywards

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for Leo's backstory only - no references to any other parts of the Humans story. If you've watched the ep with Leo's backstory, you're good to read this.
> 
> Thanks to Anita for this heartbreaking prompt: _imagine Leo using the code to make Arthur because he's tired of waiting for him_
> 
> Title from Machines by Biffy Clyro

His life has been reduced to numbers and characters, now.

His fingers continue clacking against the keyboard, before they start trembling, either from the cold or the lack of sugar in his blood, he can’t remember. The vodka made everything except the code completely irrelevant.

“Leo,” Max says softly from his side, green eyes turning from the laptop screen to look at him. “You need to eat. The last time you ate was yesterday, at seven--”

“Thank you, Max,” Leo replies curtly, running a hand through his beard, and then his hair. He slumps in his seat, looks across to where the other, deactivated synth lies on a pile of blankets. He is  _so_ close to the real thing that it hurts. A couple of alterations, perhaps, and he would be perfect.

Immortality hadn’t worked out for Merlin in the way the Sidhe had promised it would. Apparently Arthur’s life was a clause in the non-existent contract; if his King died, then Merlin would die too. But he returned, as a squalling babe in a neighbouring kingdom to Camelot, where he lived his life as the youngest son of a lord, and tried to not draw much attention to himself. The next life, he was in a large city. The next, by the sea.

Once or twice, he had spent a lifetime as a girl, and he found it an almost refreshing change. But there was still no sign of Arthur. The Once and Future King had seemingly forgotten about the ‘future’ part, and was now just a ‘once’ to Merlin.

Time sped on. Merlin remembered each of his past lives in stops and starts throughout the current life, but he remembered them all by the time he was ready to die again. He lived through war, triumph, invasion, plague, fire, revolution. Electricity was exciting invention, and it tickled the long-faded magic in his veins when he worked with it.

He supposes that’s why Leo is so good with coding now, in this day and age.

Merlin had died at an early age in other lifetimes, his reincarnation then much sooner than expected, but he had never experienced anything quite like being Leo. He had died, and been in the lonely space between death and reincarnation, suspended. Merlin had been terrified - Merlin, his old soul, not the tiny body of Leo, lungs full of water. Merlin supposes it was a mixture of his magic and his father’s genius that allowed him to keep on living, albeit with some  _modifications_ .

And here he was. Half a bottle of vodka down, with only a synth for a friend. And another... well. Another in progress.

The first thing Leo had committed to his digital memories was the image of Arthur’s face. He hadn’t known who he was, at the time (the full memories came later, and led to him crying into Mia’s shoulder for a good hour), but he had known the face was important, young as he was.

Leo stands from his seat, shushing Max’s questioning as he kneels behind the synth on the floor. He’d seen it in Hyde Park recently, after he lost his other brothers and sisters, after he finally realised that this world would never be anything but cruel to him. He hadn’t tried to find them, initially, knowing they would make it through in the end - they were clever, more clever than he was by far, even with his thousand year head start. He’d seen this synth and nearly chased him down in the park, there and then.

Max had told him to be careful, and for once, he listened to his baby brother.

Leo had tracked him, and when his owner took him in for repairs after a frankly stupid modification (no synth should be used as a Bluetooth speaker for phone calls while driving, there already  _were_ inventions that did that), Leo and Max seized their chance to snatch him. And here he was, now restored to his original root code (which was easy enough, as it was so deeply ingrained in him) and being charged every night.

“Eat, Leo,” Max says again, waking Leo from his daydream. “You’ve done a good job of converting that copy of my root code to the one you want for Martin.”

“Arthur,” Leo reminds him snappily, because he’s told the whole  _destiny_ and  _Camelot_ and  _once and future_ story to Max once already, and once is enough. He strokes the blond hair from Arthur’s forehead, remembering when he used to do this, remembering how long it’s been  _since_ he’s done this. “And I still have memories to transfer from me to him, somehow. He needs to see where he came from, he needs to remember...”

“He cannot remember something he has never experienced,” Max says chirpily, his smile wilting when Leo shoots him a dark look. “Didn’t you say you were waiting for him to turn up?”

“Yes,” Leo hisses, feeling as if he is talking to a child and not artificial intelligence. “But he never did. I’ve given up Max, okay? Is that good enough for you? There’s fuck all in this world for me without Arthur, never has been, never fucking will be. This, this  _cheap imitation_ is my last hope at being happy, and at not being alone.”

“You have me,” Max says after a moment, dejected, and belatedly Leo stands, nodding to himself. He beckons Max over to him, unable to look him in the eye.

“I’m sorry, brother. Come here,” he says, embracing Max tightly, feeling wretched about all of this, now. How many hours, days, weeks have they been plugging away at this code? Leo can’t remember.

Leo returns to his computer, eating the cereal bar that’s offered in his direction by Max and trying to not get crumbs between the keys. “Right,” he says with a mouthful of oats. “So he’s got the consciousness, that’s good. And all of his personality traits, although they might have to be done as we go... Let’s do my memories, next.”

“They won’t be his memories. That’s not a complaint,” Max says quickly, rushing to beat Leo’s glare, “but something to consider. He will never have seen your face before, through your memories, only his own. Unless you had suitable photographic devices in this Camelot you speak of. My databases turned up negative.”

Leo allows himself a short smirk. “I’ll bear it in mind. Let’s try this, then.”

*

Three weeks, two days and a bleary midnight burger run later for Leo, and he thinks he’s nearly there. He announces as such, and as always, Max beams.

“Let’s fire him up.”

Leo’s heart, mechanically supported as it is, is heavy in his chest as Max helps him stand the synth up, it now dressed in a tight red t-shirt and jeans. Leo pulls his hoodie tighter around his own body, before reaching up and gently touching underneath Arthur’s chin.

His eyes open and his head lifts to meet Leo’s eyes. Leo daren’t blink, watching Arthur come to life like this. He waits with his breath in his throat.

“Hello. I’m now in set-up mode and ready for primary user bonding.”

“Fuck!” Leo shouts, slamming his hands against this helpless synth before him, this synth that is the furthest thing from Arthur possible. A thousand years, and he still remembers Arthur’s voice, and this isn’t it. “You fucking piece of  _shit_ !”

“Leo, maybe you should--”

Leo spins and points a finger at Max. “Don’t. Don’t you dare tell me what I should be doing. Fuck off, Max. Just leave me alone.”

“But Leo, I’m your broth--”

“You’re Leo’s brother. You’re not mine.  _Leave me_ .”

Leo lets the first tear fall down his cheek as he hears the door bang shut. Max, ever loyal to the cause, ever undeserving of Leo’s company. Leo looks up, the Arthur replica still smiling vacantly at him. Breaths heaving in and out of his chest now, Leo takes the synth’s wrists in his hands, thumbing the skin there, letting his long, long buried magic come to the surface of his own skin. The pull of his magic is similar to that of when he drowned; slow, all consuming, but it finally happens, and he can feel it prickling his fingertips.

This is his last hope, now, combining his magic with his code. Why had Max’s code not copied? Was there something missing, some kind of life that this Arthur would need? Leo hopes that it’s his magic, Merlin’s magic, yet as he feels it sink into Arthur’s blue lifeblood, there is no change in Arthur’s manner. He repeats his initial greeting, and Leo just wants it to end, now. Not to kill himself and wake up as someone else (he’d tried that before), but for it to finally  _end_ .

He hates Arthur in that moment, for leaving him alone in this world, for slipping so peacefully from the cruelty he had left behind.

Leo presses his body up against the synth’s, the code still looping through the set-up mode, not reacting to the unfamiliar press of warmth against synthetic skin, no primary user to inform. Leo sighs.

“Just hold me, please,” Leo whispers, burying his face in the synth’s chest, wishing he never has to open his eyes again.

The synth closes its arms around him.

Leo jumps, moving so he can see Arthur’s face, and his mechanical heart stops. There, on the face that had been vacant just moments before, is a perfect replica of the grin Arthur used to give Merlin when he’d been particularly stupid one morning.

“You can be such a girl sometimes,  _Mer_ lin.”

Leo forgets how to breathe. The insult, the voice, even the way the synth pronounced his name, none of that was in the code and none of it he had expected so soon after reboot. “Arthur?” he croaks out, because he doesn’t dare believe it to be true.

“You’re an idiot, you know. And you really should shave, a beard doesn’t suit you,” Arthur says as Leo stares on, moving one hand to brush a curled finger against the scruff along Leo’s jaw.

“You’re here,” Leo whispers, tears brimming in his eyes. “You’re...  _real_ . You’re alive.” He reaches up to touch Arthur’s face, skin still synthetic (he knows he can’t work miracles), but good enough for him all the same. “A thousand years... you were supposed to come back.”

“And you were supposed to bring me back, with your magic,” Arthur says, still stroking. “It’s not my fault that you lot only just invented the technology.”

Leo rolls his eyes, and he isn’t Leo anymore, the man-come-machine who has drifted through his life. He’s Merlin again, here in Arthur’s arms. “Of course it isn’t  _your_ fault, prat.”

Arthur’s laugh rumbles in his chest, and Merlin pulls back, if only to tug at Arthur’s fingers. “Come. I have a brother that you need to meet.”

Arthur’s answering smile is all the encouragement Merlin needs to get through the next thousand years, and the thousand after that.


End file.
